Wednesday, October 28, 2015

What do you think of when if you hear “New Orleans” and “hot
dogs” together in the same sentence?
Some will think of the traditional or trendy lunch
delicacies served by Lucky Dogs or Dat Dog. Others will remember one of Ignatius Reilly’s
attempts at employment in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.

LaRC Manuscripts Collection 124 (Orleans Parish School
Board election scrapbooks, 1945-1963) holds a variety of papers collected and
donated by Marta Barnes Lamar (1902-1996).
Researchers interested in the history of American public education and
Louisiana politics will find the overall collection useful, by reading the correspondence, reports,
minutes, advertisements, election posters, brochures, a handbook for school
employees, a voting guide, booklets and numerous mounted and loose clippings
about working conditions, teachers’ pay, school integration, and other pressing
issues of the day.

Clippings, often considered redundant in our current research environment, may bring to light unexpected stories. One such case in point-- numerous newspaper clippings in this collection feature a 1950 incident having to do with the questionable contents of hot dogs
being served to children in New Orleans school lunchrooms.

PROBE OF FAULTY WIENERS SLATED

Grand Jury to Be Asked to Act, Says Darden

[5/3/50] Times-Picayune

The Orleans
parish grand jury will be asked to investigate the sale of adulterated wieners
to the city’s public schools.

District
attorney Severn Darden said Tuesday that he will turn the matter over to the
jury soon—but did not give a date.

Darden said he was passing the inferior “hot
dog” case to the grand jury “because of the widespread public interest.”

… made by representatives of the Great Gentilly civic
council, whose president, J. H. Burton, earlier said that “we intend to look at
the books for several years back to see if there has been any collusion in
purchases.”

Joseph Bowen,
head of the Bowen Packing Co., said he had been selling inferior wieners to the
Orleans parish school board for “about five years.” The wieners contained but 15 per cent
meat. The bid called for all meat.

The wieners he
sold the schools were made by McConnell and Snider Sausage Manufacturing Co., closed
recently for unsanitary conditions. A
quantity of horsemeat and mislabeled imitation sausages were found in the…

An online newspaper search of the scandal reveals that,
although there was general concern for the schoolchildren’s well-being, the
issue was not brought to light because of health concerns as much as by the
discrepancies in bookkeeping. Someone
realized that the price being paid for the inferior hot dogs over five years
was too low a price for all-meat hot dogs.

The odds are very good that John Kennedy Toole, born in
New Orleans in 1937 and raised locally, actually consumed some of these lunchtime
offerings during the late 1940s. The public
controversy and somewhat humorous journalistic treatment of the situation may have
inspired his young imagination.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Bryan
Black (1872-1962) of New Orleans was an officer in the 140th Field
Artillery (Washington Artillery), American Expeditionary Forces,
stationed at Messac and Valdahon, France during World War I. He and his
wife and three children lived on Arabella St. during the time period of
this collection. After his military service, Bryan Black went into the
insurance business.

LaRC
Manuscripts Collection 97 holds the personal, military, and collected
World War I papers of Lt. Col. Bryan Black. In 1962, his son and
daughters donated to Tulane University these documents and memorabilia,
including handwritten and typed correspondence,
numerous collected post cards, greeting cards, military papers,
financial documents, a diary, family and military photographs and
negatives, a published boxed set of stereographic photographs depicting
scenes of World War I, telegrams, programs, items of social ephemera,
printed pictures, advertisements, tags, tickets, fabric, medals, a cloth
doll, military collar ornaments, buckles, buttons bearing slogans,
ribbons, pins, books, pamphlets, newspaper clippings and other printed
items. The long descriptive letters, predominantly written by Lt. Col.
Black to his wife, concern family matters as well as his daily
activities while stationed in France.

This collection will be of interest to researchers in American and French history, and daily life in New Orleans during World War I. Additional military and personal papers and photographs of Bryan Black are available in the Cummings and Black families papers, 1842-1960 (Manuscripts Collection 98).

Captions: items in Manuscripts Collection 97: top, photographs of Lt. Col. Bryan Black on target range, and an unidentified woman in New Orleans; center, a Christmas letter to his wife ... "Happy Christmas ... Gee but I wish I could...." with a decorated handwritten Christmas dinner menu at Camp du Valdahon, France, December 25, 1918; bottom, a button "Welcome home, Soldiers and Sailors" and a "U.S." pin, printed pamphlets, a poem "November Eleventh" by Pvt. Hilmar R. Baukhage A.E.F. from the booklet "I was there! with the Yanks in France." Images of items in the Louisiana Research Collection may not be re-published without permission.